1. Field of the Invention
This invention involves a slicer blade for potatoes, and, more particularly, a slicer blade which creates cylindrical potato strips for a fried potato product.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Cylindrical French fried potatoes are believed to be a superior product to conventional French fries in that an elongated fried potato product of round cross section is disposed to more even cooking and less oil consumption, and thus better taste. However the preparation of cylindrical potato strips for deep fat frying has been faced with the problem that, within a slicer blade, a grouping of round slicing elements presents a roughly triangular area between each cluster of three round slicing elements which effectively hinders efficient passage of the Potato therethrough, either creating waste or requiring excessive "pusher" pressure. A previous attempt to create cylindrical potato strips is found in U.S. Pat. No. 3,687,688 issued to R. F. Stapley et al, wherein a potato is subjected to multiple separate corings, the corings being sufficiently separated from each other so that a cored potato hulk remains which is subsequently transversely sliced so that it may be used in a second deep fried potato product in the form of a perforated slice. U.S. Pat. No. 3,057,386, issued to Q. H. Massaro, utilizes concentric cutting tubes to form a single cylindrical potato core and a shell ring, both of which may subsequently be transversely sliced, or the cylindrical core left intact for deep fat frying as a potato stick of round cross section.
What is needed is a slicer blade for the cutting of cylindrical potato strips which will provide a plurality of cylindrical potato strips from a single potato with a minimum of waste and of pressure required to force a potato through the slicer blade.